Restitution

by Lee Vance

  “Please don’t,” Jenna said quietly.

  “No, no, it is an appropriate question,” Subrahmanyan said. “I am not a medical doctor or a Ph.D. My highest degree is a master’s in counseling psychology from NYU. Patients find my names difficult to pronounce, so I let them decide how to address me. Jenna chose to call me Dr. S. My given name is Tripurasundari. Please address me as you wish.”

  I smiled politely and we began. Subrahmanyan asked me about myself and listened actively as I gave her a capsule biography. Her sympathetic murmurs were like nails on a blackboard, but I kept myself in check for Jenna’s sake. Jenna fidgeted with the hem of her dress as I spoke, fingers bunching and crushing the material. When I eventually ground to a halt, Subrahmanyan thanked me for sharing.

  “Jenna,” she said. “You have some things to tell Peter, don’t you?”

  “I’m done with the IVF,” Jenna said tremulously. “I want to adopt, and I need to know whether you’re going to be there for me.”

  I flicked some lint from my suit pants and nodded, reeling internally. This wasn’t about us at all. This was about Jenna wanting to bring her work home.

  “So this is really a workout,” I said.

  “ ‘A workout’?” Subrahmanyan repeated doubtfully.

  “It’s a bankruptcy term. When a big company borrows money from a bank, it has to commit to meet certain financial targets. And if it violates those covenants, the bank calls in the poor son of a bitch who runs the company and presents him with an ultimatum. They tell him exactly how he’s going to run his business from that time forward, and if he doesn’t like it, they tell him to fuck off. Tell me,” I said, looking at Jenna. “Which of our covenants have I violated?”

  “None,” Jenna said, choking on the word as her tears fell. “But every time I bring up adoption, you come up with some new clinic or procedure and make me feel like I’d be letting you down if I didn’t try it. I can’t keep doing it. I’m not strong enough.”

  “Peter,” said Subrahmanyan, interrupting as she offered Jenna a box of tissues. “This is not a time for argument. Jenna asked you here because she feels that she can’t talk to you about this terribly important subject. Her feelings are not right or wrong, and they are not an accusation. They are simply her experience of your relationship. Now we need to know how you are feeling.”

  “That’s easy, Dr. S.,” I said, getting to my feet. “I feel like leaving.”

  Jenna caught up with me out front a few minutes later. I didn’t trust myself to speak. The car I’d called wasn’t due for twenty minutes yet, so we sheltered silently beneath the building’s narrow awning as a pounding summer rain splashed off the sidewalk and onto our legs. Jenna’s dress was getting wet. I offered her my raincoat and she threw it into the street.

  “You gave me that coat for Christmas,” I said. “I hope it wasn’t too expensive.”

  “I never thought I’d be this disappointed by you, Peter.”

  “Maybe not this disappointed,” I said, turning toward her. Mist shone in her hair, and her cheeks were damp. “But you’ve been a little disappointed for a long time, haven’t you? I was never the guy you wanted to marry.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is,” I said furiously. “You only fell in love with me because you thought I had this sad, miserable little kid inside me. You don’t like the fact that I’m strong enough to deal with my own problems.”

  “It’s hard never to feel needed,” she said.

  Her words took me aback. My mother had said almost the same thing once when I’d pleaded with her to stop drinking. I hadn’t known what she meant, and she never explained.

  “I’m sorry, then,” I said tentatively. “I can’t be something I’m not.”

  “I knew who you were when I married you,” she said, touching my lapel. “And I knew there were things about you that were going to be difficult for me. You have to understand. I don’t expect you to be that sad little boy, Peter, but I need to know that you could love some sad little boy with me. It can’t just be about us.”

  “It can,” I said, desperate to get through to her. “That’s what it was like for my father and me.”

  She drew back, her lips compressing scornfully.

  “Bullshit. It was only ever about him. When are you going to wake up to the fact that your father was a selfish jerk and free yourself of his prejudices?”

  I watched my arms lift, left hand catching hold of the front of her dress and right hand bunching into a fist. I hauled her forward onto her toes, her face inches from mine. She looked frightened for a moment before her expression hardened into contempt.

  “Use your words, Peter,” she said, taunting me with a nursery phrase.

  “My words,” I said, incandescent with rage. “It’s not my fault we’re in this situation. I’m not the one who decided to wait, and I’m not the one with a fertility problem. And yet you blame me because I won’t let you compound your mistake. So once and for all, here are my views on adoption: I don’t want a three-year-old with fetal alcohol syndrome. I don’t want a baby who was shaken, or born addicted to crack, or has HIV. I don’t want a kid some Chinese farmworker threw away like a bad melon, or to go to sensitivity training so I can learn how difficult it is for our black child to grow up in a privileged white family. I don’t want a kid whose parents were fundamentalist Christian hypocrites, or a fifteen-year-old checkout girl at the local supermarket and her bald forty-eight-year-old manager. I don’t want a kid who’s a fucking loser. Are those enough words? Do you understand me now?”

  “Perfectly,” she said, tears starting down her face again. “I understand you perfectly now.”

  I open my eyes again some time later, mouth dry as dust and a headache banging behind my temples. The child next to me is sleeping, goose bumps covering her bare arms. My cashew bowl’s empty. Ringing for the steward, I request a bottle of water and a blanket. I gulp some water, unfold the blanket, and spread it gently over the sleeping child, careful not to wake her. I start to look for my watch and catch myself just in time. It isn’t easy to unlearn behavior at my age, but it can be done.

  20

  THE IMMIGRATION OFFICER AT KENNEDY apologizes because my passport won’t scan correctly, frowns at her screen, and begins typing with one finger. I rub the wrist where I used to wear my watch, annoyed by the delay. My U.S. cell phone and computer are in the luggage I left behind, so I’ll either have to hustle up some change and find a working pay phone in the terminal or wait until I get to the Harvard Club to call Emily. A digital clock on the wall displays military time and the day of the week: 23:15, Saturday. If there are cabs waiting and I don’t hit any late-night traffic, I should be in my room before midnight. Despite my impatience, it’s probably better to wait. I shift restlessly from foot to foot, craving an ice-cold Coke and a handful of ibuprofen. I had a few more Laphroaigs after changing planes at Heathrow, and my head feels as if I’ve got a spiked metal ball rolling around in it. The officer is still tapping away at her computer, squinting at my passport myopically. It would be nice if the government hired people who knew how to type.

  “Peter Tyler?”

  Two white-shirted policemen are standing behind me, gold badges painfully bright and holstered guns prominent. The one to my left has a hand resting casually on the butt of a black metal baton hanging from his belt.

  “Yes?” I say apprehensively.

  “Would you step that way please, sir?” the cop to my right says, pointing to a beige door fifteen yards away. He’s older, with a gray fringe around a bald pate and a beer gut hanging over his belt.

  “Why?” I ask, wondering if Tilling’s arranged this reception for me, or if it has something to do with Moscow. Either way, this isn’t good.

  “We have some questions for you,” he says, taking my passport from the woman who’d been examining it. He gives it a cursory glance before slipping it into his pocket.

  “About what?”

  “Please don’t make th
is difficult, sir.”

  People in other lines stare curiously as the police lead me away, my stomach knotted with anxiety. The beige door opens to a wide cement-floored corridor with pale green walls, the plasterboard immediately opposite dented at head height, a streak of dried blood visible.

  “Face the wall, arms extended, and lean forward,” the older cop says.

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “We’re detaining you.”

  “You can’t detain me without arresting me, and you can’t arrest me without telling me why. So either tell me why I’m under arrest or let me go.”

  “Are you going to make us do this the hard way?” he asks in a bored voice.

  The younger cop steps forward smartly, the billy club in his hand.

  “No,” I say quickly, turning to the wall and leaning forward spread-eagled. “I’ll cooperate. But I want to call my lawyer.”

  “We’ll pass the message along, sir,” the older cop says. He frisks and handcuffs me, the pressure on my wrists immediately uncomfortable. I wish to Christ I weren’t so hungover. I can’t help feeling scared.

  The two police catch hold of my biceps and steer me to an elevator. We descend, walk through more pale green corridors, and enter a white-tiled room. The room’s empty save for a folding table with a box of surgical gloves, a flashlight, and a couple of wire baskets sitting on top of it.

  “I’m going to uncuff you now,” the older cop says. “You’re going to empty your pockets onto the table and take all your clothing off. You understand?”

  “When will I be able to call—”

  He twists the cuffs hard, so they bite into my wrists, and jerks up, forcing me to stagger toward the table with my head dropped to belt level.

  “And keep your fucking yap shut please, sir,” he says. “Nobody wants to listen to your bullshit.”

  I wake in a cell hours later. It’s got to be Sunday morning by now. My body’s drenched with sweat and my head hurts even more than it did earlier. After the police shined their flashlight up my ass and made me lift my balls, they gave me a blue paper jumpsuit and escorted me to a windowless six-by-eight cell smelling of ammonia, the ballast in the overhead light humming loudly. I spent a few hours pacing, claustrophobia sucking at me like an undertow. Not knowing why I’ve been detained makes everything more oppressive. I tried telling myself it was just bad luck to get picked up on a Saturday night, when every cop over the rank of thug is home watching NASCAR highlights on cable, and that I’ll be able to talk to someone responsible in the morning, find out what’s going on and get my lawyer working on my release. It didn’t help.

  I swing my legs off the metal cot bolted to the floor and try not to groan as the pain in my head pulses harder. The ammonia smell is stronger near the sink. Cupping my hands, I rinse my face and slurp a mouthful of tepid water. A mounting sense of fear makes it difficult for me to swallow. I’ve got to get out of here. I press the call button next to the door, wait twenty minutes for a guard, and demand a phone call again when one finally shows up. He drops the flap over the judas hole and walks away without responding.

  I sit back down on the cot and hunch forward, drawing deep breaths. If the Westchester DA has her way, this could be my future, held helpless in a cage and overseen by sullen keepers. A former scoutmaster of mine talked to our Webelo den before our first big overnight camping trip. He told us that when he was a boy, he’d played in an abandoned field forbidden to him and had fallen down a well. An entire night passed as he floated in the icy water, clinging to a protruding stone overhead with a death grip. He kept his panic at bay by imagining every detail of the rescue party he knew his father would have mustered. He knew the names of the men who would be looking for him, and the names of their dogs, and—most reassuringly—he knew that they were the kind of men who wouldn’t give up. If any of us ever got lost in the woods, he said, or fell down a well, or had any kind of trouble we thought we couldn’t get out of, the important thing was that we stay put and not panic, because men like him and our dads would always come looking for us.

  There’s no one looking for me now, and I can feel my strength ebbing away as surely as if I were floating in that cold, cold water. Tears of self-pity sting my eyes. The worst thing is that I thought I’d grown up to be that kind of man, the kind who doesn’t ever give up when someone he loves needs help. I let Jenna down when she needed me, and I’m letting her down again now. Hauling myself to my feet, I resume pacing. I never thought I’d be glad my father was gone, but I couldn’t bear to have him see me like this.

  “Tyler,” a voice says through the door. “We’re going to open up. Step out of your cell, face the wall, and put your hands on your head.”

  Two guards I haven’t seen before handcuff me and lead me through more corridors to a room where three men in business suits sit behind a metal table. A low stool is bolted to the floor, and a large mirror’s set into the wall opposite. There’s a second door in the wall to my right. The guards manacle my ankle to one leg of the stool, uncuff my wrists, and leave. I examine myself carefully in the mirror. I look pale and sweaty, but there’s no sign of my tears.

  “I want to call my lawyer,” I say.

  The guy in the middle leans forward, fingers interlaced. His florid, chubby face reminds me of a broker I knew who died of a heart attack on the seventeenth green at Van Cortland Park.

  “We can handle this one of two ways, Mr. Tyler,” he says. “If you cooperate with us, we’ll keep you on the books. That means due process. You’ll see your lawyer and get a chance to explain things in front of a judge, if things go that far. If you don’t cooperate, we’ll make you a special-category detainee. Your legal status will become problematic. Even if you’re innocent, it could take months to sort things out.”

  “Innocent of what?” I demand disbelievingly.

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Happily not, Mr. Tyler. We have quite a bit of latitude these days when it comes to dealing with people like you.”

  “ ‘People like me’? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “What the hell are we talking about?” the man to his right says. He’s clearly the bad cop. He’s got the mean, beady-eyed expression of a guy who had trouble learning to read as a kid, and anabolic acne on his cheeks. “We’re talking about Gitmo. We’re talking about an all-expenses-paid holiday courtesy of the U.S. Marines. That’s what we’re talking about.”

  “Get fucked,” I say, certain they’re just trying to scare me. “I’m an American citizen. Save your act for somebody who doesn’t know any better. You take me to a phone right now and let me call my lawyer, or you cut me loose. Otherwise, I’m going to make a huge amount of trouble for you guys when I get out of here.”

  The chubby cop smiles pleasantly.

  “I haven’t introduced us,” he says. “I’m Inspector Davis and my colleague here is Inspector De Nunzio.” He tips his head toward the bad cop. “We’re with the Department of Homeland Security, Strategic Investigations Branch. I assume you’ve heard of the Patriot Act?”

  I nod tentatively, apprehension beginning to wash over my anger.

  “Well, we’re the patriots,” he says smugly. He points to the third man. “Mr. Lyman is a consultant.”

  “I’m an American citizen,” I repeat, my voice sounding weaker. “You can’t fuck with me.”

  “You’d be surprised what we can do,” Davis says. “Mr. Lyman?”

  Lyman takes a miniature tape recorder from his pocket and puts it on the table. His suit’s a little too shiny, his wire-rimmed glasses more oval than normal, and he’s got a styled military haircut with mousse in it. He looks European.

  “You’re an American citizen with serious legal problems,” Davis says. “Those problems could get worse.”

  Lyman touches the play button. I hear a woman crying, and then recognize Andrei’s voice as he speaks Jenna’s name, comforting her.

  “Jenna. C
ome on. Don’t cry, sweetheart. Tell me what it is.”

  “We had a fight. Peter grabbed me. For a second, I thought he was going to hit me.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m so scared, Andrei. I think it might be over.”

  Lyman pushes the off button as Jenna’s voice trails into sobs. I feel sick with self-loathing. It’s hard enough to live with myself without being forced to confront my failings in front of hostile strangers.

  “We haven’t shared this tape with the police yet,” Davis says. “Or any of the other tapes in our possession. Your wife’s murder isn’t of interest to us. What we eventually decide to release, and to whom, depends largely on your cooperation right now.”

  My brain’s slowly beginning to work again. This is about Andrei. I feel disoriented, unable to imagine what he might have done that’s attracted the attention of the Department of Homeland Security.

  “I don’t know anything,” I say, struggling to sound composed.

  “Enough of this shit,” De Nunzio announces. “Listen, Tyler, I got a couple of Cuban hookers in the cell next door, and I know I’d have more fun with them. You don’t want to answer questions for us now, we can give you a week to think about it, let you get used to eating instant oatmeal that the cook pissed in. So you tell me, we gonna talk now, or later?”

  “What do you want me to tell you?”

  Two hours later, we’re going through my trip to Moscow for the third time, Davis asking all the questions. Lyman’s taking notes, and De Nunzio’s hanging his head, picking his zits, and looking bored. The repetition’s given me a chance to pull myself together. I’ve been forthcoming on all fronts save that I haven’t mentioned Pongo, the files I took from Andrei’s computer, or Emily’s implied admission that she knew who was after me in Moscow. Davis said he didn’t care about Jenna’s murder. I’m not going to give up any of my leads to him willingly.

  “So that’s everything, Mr. Tyler? Nothing you’ve forgotten to tell us about?” Davis asks.